The delights and disappointments of Disney’s Frozen

MANILA, Philippines - When the freshly-crowned Queen Elsa loses control over her ice sorcery, she flees her kingdom in shame and unwittingly leaves people in a harsh perpetual winter. It is up to her younger sister, the Princess Anna, to bring her back. In true Disney fashion she meets some friends along the way who may need to help her bring her sister back and end the winter, but ultimately she takes the duty unto herself. And there lies the film’s most winning quality, the fact that it revolves around the relationship between sisters.

As a loose adaptation of the Hans Christian Anderson fairytale The Snow Queen, the film takes some unusual turns and has explores neither the effects of intellectualism nor the personhood of children found in the source material. Instead, it tells an enjoyable, if not overly calculated, story in the tradition of Disney’s princess films.

Though the expressions on the characters’ faces come off as limited (and, in general, the character designs don’t do anything particularly amazing, sticking to stock body shapes), there’s some enthusiastic voice acting and singing by the likes of Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, Jonathan Groff, Josh Gad, and Santino Fontana to make the characters come alive.

Everything else is beautifully animated, with wintry scenery that will take your breath away and action through the snow that will make you imagine the cinema’s air-conditioning is actually a blizzard in the making.

The animation sparkles like real winter and something more, distracting from some stilted storytelling. Adults may not be as impressed as their kids by the humour and emotions so literally spelled out at times. Add to this the musical numbers, which did not quite hit the best notes and had lyrics sounding more like branded candy pop and not at all to the standard of the classic Disney films. While there was no shortage of talent in the cast, there was not much to show us of it, and it is increasingly certain that the real priority in Disney’s new phase of films is branding and marketability.

The sisters, as said, are the best part of the film. In them the young ones watching the film will not only find two princesses to admire but two girls to relate to. It is rare to see the affection between siblings take precedence over the romanticised Prince Charming routine, even rarer to see such a positive portrayal of a relationship between sisters. Moreover each sister is allowed to be herself, Anna with her plucky and fun-loving spirit, Elsa with her burdened sense of responsibility and fearsome magical powers. Neither sister is punished for being who they are, and in a world where this type of affirmation for young girls is not easy to find this film is very welcome. For this reason alone it may be justified to say that Frozen does indeed make a new kind of fairytale, and one can only hope it is a direction in a new kind of film.